


Mycroft Cares

by turante



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 02:16:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10675614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turante/pseuds/turante
Summary: A companion to ‘Korean Elections’, Sherlock falls asleep at Mycroft’s. He takes care, as usual.





	Mycroft Cares

It was the middle of the night when Mycroft finally was free to go to bed. He got off the car, and through the front door of his house. He hung his raincoat and umbrella, removed his shoes, put on slippers and went upstairs mechanically. He entered his own room to find Sherlock asleep on his chair, arms folded under his head on the desk in front of him, a scrap of paper crushed in his right hand, a poorly done bandage with tiny blood stains around his left palm.

He sighed and walked closer. If he hadn’t heard the strange sound his brother did when he was asleep – not a proper snore, more like a ragged breath every now and then – he would have run to check for a pulse.

Sherlock’s eyes were closed, his eyelashes fluttering slightly with his phase of dreamless sleep. Mycroft took in the sunken look of his eyes, the dark circles under them, and the sharpness of his brother’s features, knowing that his brother had pushed himself to his limits for the case, like he always did, and Mycroft felt always a pang of guilt at that. He felt responsible because he had given Sherlock the case and insisted enough that he finally took it.

He removed his own jacket and draped it across Sherlock’s shoulders, knowing that his brother would have never let him, had he been awake.

When Sherlock slept like that, to Mycroft he was again the three-year-old that fell asleep with his head on his lap in the car on the way back from the Natural History Museum, after having exhausted himself running everywhere, pulling at Mycroft’s sleeve to catch his attention all day, pestering him continuously to help him read the inscription beside the showcases.

Mycroft removed his own tie and then the waistcoat, folding it neatly and leaving it on the other chair in the room. He unbuttoned his shirt and thought of the time when he was nineteen and his twelve-year-old brother had run away from home for the second time, and after returning to his apartment he had found Sherlock sleeping on his tiny and lumpy sofa instead of his bed.

He threw the shirt in the laundry basket together with his t-shirt. He removed his trousers and then went to the bathroom to take a quick shower.

There was the time that Sherlock had collapsed in his office while he was leaving after a particularly heated fight, and the scariest night in his life when he had found Sherlock overdosing on the sofa of his old flat, the rush to the hospital and the whole day he had spent beside his bed, watching his unconscious brother, torn between anger and concern.

He walked back to his room and Sherlock was still there, his breathing even and soft, every now and then that peculiar intake of breath.

Mycroft put his pyjamas on and folded back the sheets on his bed. He opened a drawer and put a clean pair of pyjamas on top of the other pillow, then climbed into bed and switched the light off.


End file.
